Yet he didn’t immediately join the the gun safety movement. It wasn’t until the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Mass., when he watched the victims on TV the same way the rest of the nation watched his tragedy at Virginia Tech, that something changed for Goddard. He has come to refer to this shift as his ‘Newtown moment.’

“I think the fact that it was an elementary school shook this country to its core,” he told Forbes. “People said, ‘Something has to change.’”

The following day, Goddard packed his bags and moved to Washington DC.

That’s not the history I remember, and I’m betting you don’t either. The reason for that is because it’s totally made up. A search for “Goddard” on my blog turns up dozens of stories when Colin was professionally employed by the DC-based Brady Campaign wellbefore Sandy Hook. The entire narrative offered to lackadaisical Forbes reporter Alexandra Wilson is entirely manufactured! Ten minutes of Googling would have shown Colin Goddard is making up this timeline.

Reporters need to be a lot more skeptical of claims from the gun control movement. Chances are if you see their lips moving, you’re either being outright lied to, or you’re being deceived in some way. Check their facts with actual experts.

UPDATE from Bitter: It turns out that she didn’t even need to Google it. Colin’s own LinkedIn page says he started working as an Assistant Director of Federal Legislation in the gun control movement years before the Newtown shooting. Yet Alexandra Wilson claims he didn’t even head to DC until after Sandy Hook. So is she lying about the timeline, was she deceived, or do Brady Campaign donors have a very fair concern over why a former Assistant Director wasn’t working in DC, despite his job being to work on federal affairs?

10 Responses to “Forbes Accepts an Entirely Manufactured Narrative”

So do we all, claims from everybody, and we shouldn’t depend on reporters to do it for us, since the fates gave us Google.

I long ago lost count of the times I read some source saying things I liked and wanted to believe, but when I checked out the person, found their roots less than credible, and their claim traceable to no credible source.

I once was handed a tract by some guy at a public meeting, and was shocked to find myself listed as a reference for one of its claims. But in original context, I had been merely speculating and making no claim of fact, whatsoever, and I had no real credentials to be commenting on the issue, in the first place.

I tweeted her when this post went up, and neither she, Forbes, nor the Forbes under 30 handles are willing to respond as of yet. Interestingly, Alexandra posted a bit about journalists losing their jobs to bloggers after I tweeted her, and I just couldn’t help but snark that bloggers have done a better job researching her subject today than she bothered to do.

As a broad statement, they don’t mean individual journalists losing their jobs specifically due to a single blogger. They mean the complete collapse of traditional media budgets that mean not as many are hired and many are let go. Much of that comes from the decline of advertising in the digital age and the fact that someone who writes for a site posting 100 listicles a day will get more ad revenue rather than an in-depth local report.

Shockingly, obviously, blatantly, false reporting by the Ruling Class News Media when it comes to gun-control is just SOP. They have been doing it for fifty years now, no reason to believe they will ever stop or ever feel shame for it.

Hi, I am Colin Goddard and I was absolutely involved in the gun safety movement before 12/14/12, very publicly and proudly in fact – your article is about how a reporter got their facts & dates mixed up.